Motorola Mobility has 17,000 Patents, 18 Are Important to Android

When the news broke that Google had acquired Motorola everyone was surprised to say the least. The patent wars of late have been getting very old and it seems most of the OEM's welcome the deal and see it as protection to the Android ecosystem. A new report has came out after a few have dug through the patent portfolio from Motorola and they are now mentioning what will be the key patents for Google and Android thanks to Motorola.

I quickly found myself wondering what all Motorola had patents on, and how much of them would actually be useful to Google and Android. Google did offer up $12.5 Billion dollars to Motorola so they must have seen something they liked. If the Google Motorola deal goes ahead as planned, they will take on 17,000 existing patents while another 7,500 are pending approval. Out of that massive portfolio, only about 18 will be key to Google defending the Android platform, according to patent lawyer David Mixon, who spoke with Bloomberg.

Any patent owner, before they consider litigation is going to carefully evaluate their patents to withstand an attack. You don’t want to hold any back. You want to pick your strongest patents,” said Mixon in a telephone interview.

Mixon goes on during the interview to mention specifically around 18 patents that will be key for Google and Android. They include antenna designs, email transmissions, location and GPS services, software-application management, 3G wireless technology, and touchscreen motions. Included in "touchscreen motions" is also a proximity and touch sensor patent for when the device is near a head or in a pocket to prevent accidental hang-ups or dialing.

If the deal goes on as planned it's safe to say Google may end up with a nice combo for counter-attack should the situation present itself. Defending off the lions at Apple, Microsoft, and RIM won't be an easy task, but this might make it a heck of a lot easier. Motorola has been in the Mobile industry for a very long time, they have an impressive portfolio and I'm sure there is plenty more to find once Google gets their feet wet. Hopefully this helps calm down all these crazy lawsuits we've been seeing as of late.